Weight maintenance is just as important as weight gain and weight loss, and many people actually find it to be more challenging than either gaining or losing. So, instead of treating maintenance programs as an afterthought, we’ve put a lot of care and effort into making maintenance programs in MacroFactor smarter and more dynamic than what you’d typically encounter. This knowledge base entry will discuss how maintenance programs work in MacroFactor, and why they’ll increase your odds of long-term success.
When you set a maintenance goal in MacroFactor, you start by selecting the weight you’d like to maintain. From there, if you’re on a coached or collaborative macro program, MacroFactor’s coaching algorithms will adjust your dietary targets to help you stay near the weight you’re trying to maintain. Here’s how it works:
MacroFactor starts by comparing your current trend weight to the weight you’d like to maintain.
If your trend weight is within 1.5 pounds (about 0.7kg) of your target weight, your nutrition recommendations will track closely with your expenditure – your weight is close to the weight you’re trying to maintain, so MacroFactor’s nutrition recommendations are “true” maintenance recommendations. In other words, the amount of energy you consume should closely match the amount of energy you’re expending.
If your trend weight is more than 1.5 pounds (about 0.7kg) above or below your target weight, MacroFactor will recommend a very small deficit or surplus (respectively) to nudge you back toward the weight you’re trying to maintain. The recommended surplus or deficit will be consistent with intake targets designed to help you gain or lose 0.15% of your body weight per week. Once your trend weight is within 1.5 pounds of your target maintenance weight, MacroFactor will go back to recommending intake targets consistent with “true” maintenance.
Just to illustrate, let’s assume you’re trying to maintain a body weight of 75kg, and your expenditure is 2500 kcal/day.
If your trend weight is between 74.3 and 75.7kg, your intake targets should be very close to your expenditure (2500 kcal/day). However, if your trend weight drifts above 75.7kg, MacroFactor will recommend a small deficit, consistent with losing about 0.15% of body mass per week (about 0.11 kg/week). So, instead of recommending an intake target of about 2500 kcal/day, MacroFactor would recommend an intake target of about 2375 kcal/day in an attempt to nudge your weight back toward the weight you’re trying to maintain. Then, when your trend weight gets back below 75.7kg, MacroFactor will go back to recommending intake targets consistent with “true” maintenance. Conversely, if your trend weight drifts below 74.3kg, this same process applies, but in reverse: MacroFactor will recommend a small surplus to nudge your weight back up, returning to a “true” maintenance recommendation once your trend weight is above 74.3kg again.
Many people successfully lose weight, but struggle with weight loss maintenance. MacroFactor’s dynamic maintenance process is designed to increase your chances of long-term success by gently guiding you along the path of successful weight loss maintenance. At the end of a diet, people often burn out by returning to unguided, unrestricted eating habits, regaining some weight, panicking, doing a short crash diet to lose the handful of pounds they’d regained, and repeating the process. After a few rounds of this cycle, it becomes easy to assume that successfully maintaining weight loss is just too stressful and difficult to bother with long-term.
In contrast, MacroFactor’s dynamic maintenance program should provide you with a soft landing following a weight loss attempt, and a more stress-free experience of maintaining weight loss long-term. Your trend weight won’t overreact to short-term fluctuations in your scale weight, which will help you maintain peace of mind if the number of the scale does temporarily increase a bit. Furthermore, if your weight does start creeping back up, a small nudge is all it should take to get you back on track; there’s no need to drastically slash calories again and turn weight maintenance into a rollercoaster of drastic energy deficits and unrestricted overeating.
At the end of a diet, the hard part should be behind you. Maintenance should be easier and more stress-free. MacroFactor’s dynamic maintenance mode makes weight maintenance as easy as it should be.